Changing parts in Eagle

[electrolust]

I've been using schemeit, but it doesn't have integrated PCB design so I am trying Eagle.

In schemeit, you just blithely draw your schematic with little concern for what the part is going to be.  Then you can go and use the BOM integration (really nice) to choose parts.

In Eagle, you have to know what part you are going to use, while you're still drawing the schematic.  eg, 0603 vs 0805 SMD resistor.   This seems very painful, especially so if you want to go through and change parts.

Am I missing something?

[FreddyVictor]

I've been using schemeit, but it doesn't have integrated PCB design so I am trying Eagle.

In schemeit, you just blithely draw your schematic with little concern for what the part is going to be.  Then you can go and use the BOM integration (really nice) to choose parts.

In Eagle, you have to know what part you are going to use, while you're still drawing the schematic.  eg, 0603 vs 0805 SMD resistor.   This seems very painful, especially so if you want to go through and change parts.

Am I missing something?

you can change the package (physical part) by clicking the Change icon (Wrench) and then select Package and click the part you want to change (but this only works if the part has multiple packages!)

if you want to learn eagle, there is a pdf tutorial which is worth reading as it is not super-intuitive

[Kleinstein]

In a limited range one can use the change package function. This does not work well with older part definitions, where different sizes are separate parts, but at least for resistors and capacitors there are new definitions that allow this.

[electrolust]

Ok cool.

Is there an easy way for me to know which parts (at least passives) have multiple footprints?

I noticed for example that there is a *1458 part which has "technology" "LM" and footprint variants "N" and "D".  These show up in the parts list as 2 distinct parts LM1458N and LM1458D.  I see now that I can change that part between the 2 variants. But from the part selector GUI I can't see how I would know this.

EDIT: I figured it out, I think.  Looks like a library contains only devices (duh?).  Therefore if you drill into a library, that top level has only devices.  Anything that looks like a folder represents a device that has multiple variants, which I suppose means different footprints (although I guess technically it could be the same footprint with different connections).